Traditionally, the serving of a roast has had associated with it a certain amount of formality, as perhaps best exemplified by Rockwell's Thanksgiving images. The delivery of a whole roast, e.g. a turkey, from a roasting rack, tray, or pan to the serving platter is a task arguably requiring more muscle than art, science, or gadgetry. In lieu of carving the bird in the roasting pan and arranging it thereafter upon a serving platter, it remains desirable to deliver it, in its entirety, onto a platter for spotlighting at the table.
Heretofore known “solutions” to the roast delivery problem are generally directed to lifting (i.e., scooping) or holding utensils which characteristically may be disintegrated into components in furtherance of removal from about or around a roast once delivered to a platter, see e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 1,263,863 (Crosby), U.S. Pat. No. 2,450,716 (Chittick), U.S. Pat. No. 2,703,046 (Ahlquist), U.S. Pat. No. 3,075,798 (Smith), U.S. Pat. No. 3,338,486 (Gaylor), U.S. Pat. No. 5,638,742 (Kassaseya), and U.S. Pat. No. 6,164,194 (Westmoreland). Although such lifting aides may in fact aid lifting, muscling of the roast to the platter remains an essential step of the table presentation.
In contradistinction to lifting utensils per se, U.S. Pat. No. 4,677,906 (Lowe) and U.S. Pat. No. 3,585,922 (Peterson) generally disclose roasting devices, a pan insert and basket respectively, from which the roast is slid, i.e., dumped, into a platter (Lowe), or taken apart such that the basket floor remains under the roast in the platter to prevent unwanted sliding (Peterson). Although possessing greater structural integrity than most of the traditional utensils, the subject devices nonetheless suffer a variety of shortcomings, e.g., Lowe requires transfer of a heavy roast from a low friction surface to a platter having a low friction surface, the ability to control such transfer being limited to a literal “hands-on” technique, or otherwise stabbing the roast with a fork or the like to aid the transfer; Peterson, although permitting a controlled lifted transfer to a platter, leaves behind and visible the basket base which is interposed between the platter and the roast. Thus, it remains advantageous to provide a roasting rack assembly for delivery a roast directly to a serving platter, more particularly, an assembly which is configurable so as to “drop” a roast into an underlying platter, thus avoiding heretofore known tilting of the rack, or securing the roast by hand or with a utensil during a transfer operation.